6 Best VPS Hosting - Updated Reviews in 2020

One of the simplest and fastest options to start a website is to opt for a shared hosting environment and start getting visitors. But if you have a growing business, this would not last long, and you will start wondering in no time about what should be your next step. This is because as your website grows, so does the need for more resources and you start encountering slow speeds.

In such a scenario, VPS hosting comes to the rescue. Even though it is still a shared environment, it is a definite step up in terms of cost and other points of view. You will still be sharing server space with others, but the way this is achieved is different from traditional methods. An undeniable added advantage is that the number of users on a server is in mere double digits, compared with the thousands on a shared server.

Doubtless, VPS hosting would be a great upgrade if you can afford it and you should upgrade as soon as your website starts getting traction and visitors. Sure, the price difference is a bit off putting, but it is worth the performance upgrade. Virtually every hosting company out there has rolled out their VPN services and offer competitive services at reasonable prices which you can take advantage of.

So which of them is the best VPS hosting provider? Let’s find out.

1. BlueHost

Company Profile

Bluehost is among the oldest hosting companies and was founded in 2003 in Provo, Utah. It now serves over 2 million websites, providing the highest quality of service. They have had a partnership with WordPress for over 10 years and employ more than 750 people to help their customers round the clock. The company is owned by hosting behemoth Endurance International Group (EIG), which owns more than 80 companies; some of them are rather well-known hosting companies such as iPage, Bluehost, Hostgator and many more.

The company claims that all their VPS servers are built up from the ground using SSD storage so the user can enjoy increased control and power over their websites.

Pricing and VPS Features

Bluehost uses OpenStack and KVM technology, which is both easy to use and powerful, and they offer instant provisioning, which means that you can use your server the moment you need it. They have 3 pricing plans:

Every configuration includes the versatile cPanel which has tools for WHM control and VPS management, a guarantee that all their resources are available at all times, state-of-the-art components, and the servers themselves are designed to support SSH access, web-based managers and more.

You also get complete control of your server with root access, multi-server management and access control. For an extra price, you also have access to SiteLock, additional resources, spam protection and domain privacy.

2. Hostgator

Company Profile

Hostgator has been around since 2002, and has over 8 million domains, making them one of the largest providers in the world. Apart from dedicated hosting, they also offer plans for WordPress, cloud and cheap dedicated game servers. The company has around 8 million domains and 7,000 servers under management and dominates about 1% of the internet’s traffic.

All the plans come with 63-bit root access, optional cPanel with WHM control panel, support for Ruby on Rails, Python, MySQL, Perl, PHP and Python and Apache web server. You also get multiple security features such as secured VPS firewall, centralized DDoS protection and free IPtable firewall.

With Hostgator plans, you get cutting-edge hardware such as supermicro servers, Intel servers fault-tolerant RAID disk arrays, fully redundant network with no single point of failure, gigabit uplink with a guaranteed 20Mbit connection, multiple bandwidth providers and state-of-the-art data centers.

3. InMotion

Company Profile

InMotion is based out of Los Angeles, California and has been a 3-star CNET certified company since 2003. It was founded in 2001. The company offers a number of services that include shared hosting, dedicated servers and VPS hosting, web design services and site hosting tools. The service is fast and reliable and trusted by millions of customers worldwide.

Inmotion has an impressive customer base, with over 300,000 customer domains and offices in both the East and West coasts.

Pricing and VPS Features

InMotion offers managed VPS, cloud VPS and reseller hosting (which is on sale right now at 24% off). We will look at the managed VPS hosting and its features. They offer 3 plans:

Please note that all these plans are broken down into 2-year, 1-year, 1-month and 6-month segments and priced accordingly. We have listed the 2-year plans. With these plans, you get cloud-powered redundancy, automatic server backups, secure email, a whopping 90-day money back guarantee and solid state drives.

You also get SSH access, resource monitoring dashboard, optimized e-commerce, unlimited email accounts and MySQL databases and much more.

4. iPage

Company Profile

iPage hosts over a million websites in their two data centers and was originally founded in 1998 in Boston. Its main target is people on a low budget and those who have just made their appearance online.

Pricing and VPS Features

With each iPage VPS plan, you get free domain registration for 1 year, pre-installed scripts such as Python/Perl, PHP5 and many more along with managed support. They have 3 plans:

Basic: Starting from $19.99 per month (VAT not included in the price; down from the regular $24.99), you get 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM, 40GB disk space, 1TB bandwidth, 1 IP address, CentOS 6.4 and cPanel among other features.

Business: Starting from $47.99 per month (VAT not included in the price; down from the regular $59.49), you get 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 90GB disk space, 3TB bandwidth, 2 IP addresses, CentOS 6.4 and cPanel among other features.

Optimum: Starting from $79.99 per month (VAT not included in the price; down from the regular $99.99), you get 4 CPU cores, 8GB RAM, 120GB disk space, 4TB bandwidth, 2 IP addresses, CentOS 6.4 and cPanel among other features.

With each plan, you can customize your hosting plan and install proprietary software, high-speed SAN storage and guaranteed memory allocation. Please note that the plans renew at the regular rate.

5. Liquid Web

Company Profile

One of the most expensive providers in this list, Liquid Web was established in 1997 and has 5 global data centers. It has been cited by reviewers as the best dedicated server hosting in 2020, and has 500,000 sites under management and 30,000-plus customers in over 150 countries. It has more than 250 experienced and dedicated technicians and, engineers and administrators that work towards making the lives of their clients easier.

Pricing and VPS Features

Liquid Web offers a feature-rich service that they claim is faster than AWS, Rackspace and Digital Ocean which makes them 200% faster than their contemporaries. They offer 4 plans:

For a starting price of $59 per month, you get 2GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 40GB SSD disk space, 10TB bandwidth and a Linux-only environment.

For a starting price of $99 per month, you get 4GB RAM, 4 vCPUs, 100GB SSD disk space, 10TB bandwidth and a choice between a Linux or Onyx environment.

For a starting price of $139 per month, you get 8GB RAM, 8 vCPUs, 150GB SSD disk space, 10TB bandwidth and a choice between a Linux or Onyx environment.

For a starting price of $189 per month, you get 16GB RAM, 8 vCPUs, 200GB SSD disk space, 10TB bandwidth and a choice between a Linux or Onyx environment.

You also get proprietary security enhancements to secure your data with ServerSecurePLUS and a host of other server protection software.

6. Hostwinds

Company Profile

The company was founded in 2010 to provide great infrastructure, responsive support and cost-effective prices to its customers. Their product line offers multiple hosting options and are quite popular because of their clean interface which is of great help for the non-tech savvy.

Pricing and VPS Features

The company offers managed and unmanaged Windows and Linux VPS hosting plans. Let us take a look at their managed Linux plans.

For a starting price of $5.17 per month (at 53% off, the original price is 10.99 per month), you get 1 CPU core, 1GB RAM, 30GB disk space or 1TB/1GBPS port.

For a starting price of $10.34 per month (at 53% off, the original price is 21.99 per month), you get 1 CPU core, 2GB RAM, 50GB disk space or 2TB/1GBPS port.

For a starting price of $18.80 per month (at 53% off, the original price is 39.99 per month), you get 2 CPU cores, 4GB RAM, 75GB disk space or 2TB/1GBPS port.

For a starting price of $23.97 per month (at 53% off, the original price is 50.99 per month), you get 2 CPU cores, 6GB RAM, 100GB disk space or 2TB/1GBPS port.

All their plans include solid state drives, custom ISOs, DDoS protection, 99.99% uptime, free website transfers, instant scalability (you can upgrade or downgrade as you like), full-time system monitoring to ensure your system is running optimally, enterprise hardware and a redundant network.

Conclusion

VPS hosting provides you the flexibility that best suits your needs and offers you great scalability which means you can upgrade as your needs increase. In almost all cases, you have root access to the server for greater control over the configuration of your server or installation of various apps through a control panel.

On the other hand, if you are coming from shared servers, you will find this option more expensive. So how did the providers listed in this article do? Let’s see:

BlueHost: This provider offers great scalability at very affordable prices and makes it easy to get started for first-time users.

Hostgator: It is one of the largest providers in the world and hence, provide excellent uptime and services.

InMotion: This is a respected company and constantly offers discounts on most of its services.

iPage: This is a well-rounded VPS hosting provider and allows you great customizability of your plans.

Liquid Web: Though the most expensive of the lot, Liquid Web offers some of the most powerful plans among its competitors and is one of the top VPS hosting providers.

Hostwinds: The company offers versatile plans for both managed and unmanaged Linux and Windows plans.

Before you make your selection, be sure to make a careful note of the pricing plans of each of the providers listed here.